I'm sorry if my posts has conveyed the message that I wish a divorce for you. That certainly is not what I've tried to do. Believe me, I would like all of us to get a second chance because I truly do believe a BD, choosing to grow instead of say falling to drinking, and this board will give us so many tools to analyze and make the best of our relationships.
My personal belief is that the biggest chance for a recon is when we have reached the point where we are fine either way. Because at that point, we naturally become more attractive and we stop being careful about what we do and say. Also, at that point, if we have done the self-growth, we are truly the person we want to be and come out as genuine in interactions. Personally, I'm trying to mirror my XW's behavior and I try to use DB-style (and e.g. how to win friends and influence people -style) interacting with everyone I talk to! This way it gets "forced" into my thinking so I'm genuinely changing, not just towards my XW.
All the power for you if you can truly reach that state by thinking about statistics and those medical studies. I do know them because I have read them. For me, they acted as a way to "settle". "Their R is a rebound/started from EA during our M, probably not going to work". It's too comfortable. It's cool if you don't think this way and this mentality lets you detach fully, I myself can't. My point is that your behavior should be not dependent on the statistics. Would your behavior change if it was only 1% of people who regret? NO. Concentrate on you and let her go.
You asked if XW doesn't cross my mind ever? OF COURSE SHE DOES. I have imagined us being at a beach with me handstanding over her and doing handstand pushups to kiss her. I have imagined taking her and kids to trips. I have imagined I learn to play her favorite song with guitar and play it in our second wedding! I have imagined how much better husband I would be now if I got the chance (in terms of affection, being there for her, sex, etc) but I realized this is only hurting my process. Every time when I get emotional and start to think about something like that, I try to reframe it to something I call "a faceless girl". I know I will meet someone in my future (I don't believe in recon for myself, but of course I would also give that for her if we ever did recon) and I can do all that with her!
I can see that we are probably arguing about nothing, really. We are probably misinterpreting your text. But I think you also have hard time understanding what "fighting for your M" means. If you let her go and concentrate on you, you ARE FIGHTING for your marriage. There's just nothing else you can do. You stop fighting for your marriage the moment you begin to think you wouldn't take her back even if she'd want to. Or the moment you find someone else who you fall in love with.
About validation: you can validate as much as you want, as long as it comes genuinely and feels natural, in my opinion. Also, I didn't understand what "validate her behavior with kids" meant. You validate feelings, not actions.
Again, all of these are just my own views like you said, I wish only all the best for you. My only concern is those stories I've read where the H has been used as a doormat while WW has jumped from A to another. All the cases I've read with recon, the H "found balls" and literally stopped caring about WW. They weren't cold, they just didn't keep them as their W anymore. But it seems you are not going towards this (doormat) direction so good!
In my thirties, BDd 2017, divorced 2 young kids new relationship
